What are The Emotions

Bibliographic Data

ID22016171
AuthorsMatthew Ratcliffe (0000-0003-4519-4833, University of York, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume16
Issue2
Pagese93908
Publication date2025-10-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueVoluntas Revista Internacional de Filosofia (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2179-3786 • E-ISSN: 1573-7888
PublisherUniversidade Federal de Santa Maria (PUBLISHER • BR)
DOI10.5902/2179378693908
OpenAlexW4415549243
LanguageEN
References cited37

Philosophers and cognitive scientists frequently construe emotional experience in terms of discrete episodes or states that can be individuated, enumerated, and assigned to different types. In this paper, I address (a) the source and status of this broad conception of the emotions, and (b) the extent to which it succeeds in accommodating the structure and variety of human emotional experiences. I argue that the emotions are a selective abstraction from the much richer phenomenology of emotional life. This abstraction originates neither in an everyday, commonsense picture of emotion nor in emotion theory. Instead, it is a chimerical hybrid of the two, which risks eclipsing the complexity, diversity, and nuances of human emotional life. I conclude by sketching a philosophical perspective that emphasizes the dynamic, temporally extended structure of emotional experience more so than individuation, enumeration, and classification

Abstraction · Cognition · Philosophy of mind · Emotions and Moral Behavior · History of Emotions Research · Humor Studies and Applications

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